A reader could be forgiven if, just a few chapters into The Most Beautiful Walk in the World, he or she were to lower the book and ask, “Wait: where are the walks?” As it turns out, John Baxter’s loving homage to the charming, winding streets of Paris is not so much a book recommending where to walk, but the je ne sais quoi of the walk. An Australian expatriate who has lived in Paris for 20 years, Baxter’s book brims with the flavors, scents, modern myths, and personal anecdotes of Parisian street culture.

Indeed, the book might well have been titled The Accidental Literary Tour Guide. An aficionado of the literary giants whose close ties to his adoptive city are legendary – among them Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and James Joyce – Baxter finds himself gently shanghaied into leading literary tours in Paris. Wary of lulling his clients to sleep with dates and names, Baxter quickly realizes that his tourists “didn’t want their Paris. They wanted mine. Plenty of time when they got home to read Flaubert or a history of the French Revolution. What they wanted now was to reach out and touch the living flesh – to devour and be devoured.”

As a result, The Most Beautiful Walk in the World is less a “how to” guidebook and more a thought-provoking stroll with a historian friend. Whether admiring an antique shop’s unique opium pipe, browsing art galleries for a Matisse, walking in the historic footsteps of a serial killer, or drinking absinthe with a trio of Texan ladies on their first excursion outside the U.S., Baxter’s walks are graceful, intimate anecdotes, providing a spectrum of luminous glimpses into the heart of one of the most beautiful and fascinating cities in the world.

There is something about natural beauty that seems to always ask for more – more heat, more greatness, more overpowering beauty.  The Romantics wrote of the sublime – the overwhelming appreciation of a natural phenomenon, tinged with awe and fear.  This is the experience many of us seek through travel, although we do not always find something so humbling.

Our newest feature article, by freelance writer Vanessa H. Larson, takes us to Cirali, a small town in Mediterranean Turkey.   Larson is seeking the Chimera, a self-replenishing burning rock that has spawned many myths and inspired countless writers.  However, Larson is interested in one novelist in particular: Nazli Eray.  In 1983, Eray published Orpheus, a surrealistic retelling of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice.  Larson walks through the August night to rock formation, searching for a place to locate Eray, and in the process, she rediscovers her own sense of awe and wonderment.

I, too, have recently found myself staring at rocks, looking for answers.  Just last weekend I visited Purgatory Chasm in Sutton, Massachusetts, for the first time.  Reading about the Chimera, I am reminded of this incredible natural formation – the violent, rocky gash that opens out of the earth.  While I can’t offer forth any great epiphany, I can say this: whether you are able to travel far, or only have the time for a local jaunt, there is always the opportunity to be wowed by nature.

Join us this week in celebrating the intersections between mythology and landscape (and wishing for summer’s heat) by reading The Chimera, A Mystical Journey of Nazli Eray’s Orpheus.

The book recounts his early writing career and his subsequent travels across the globe. From the heights of Kilimanjaro and the Mayan pyramids, to the depths of the shark-filled waters of Tahiti, Crichton uses his copious talent for gripping narratives to recount the personal adventures of a man seeking new experiences. Crichton’s writing chronicles his inner travels as well, focusing on forays into mysticism, exorcism, channeling, and psychic events.

Though travel writing may seem like a unique and specialized genre, many authors well known in other genres have published their own travel accounts. At it’s core, travel writing is the art of communicating one’s experience of the world. Michael Crichton is just one of these “hidden travel writers,” who used his flair for the thrilling, dramatic, and other-worldly to translate his physical and mental journeys into engaging prose.

(Michael Crichton, Travels. New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1988.)